


Midnight Chicken and Other Recipes Worth Living For (A Slayer's Guide to Moving Forward and Being Happy)

by talesofstories



Series: A Slayer's Guide to Living [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, and there doesn't need to be plot when there's love, but all the good things that happened there are being pulled into this as well, just a series of vignettes, look this is all fluff all the time, plot happened in the first part of this story, there isn't really a plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22061110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talesofstories/pseuds/talesofstories
Summary: Spike is back in Buffy's life, and now they get to build a life together, a life that can be whatever they want it to be.
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Series: A Slayer's Guide to Living [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1587832
Comments: 13
Kudos: 88





	Midnight Chicken and Other Recipes Worth Living For (A Slayer's Guide to Moving Forward and Being Happy)

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read the first work in this series, "How to Eat (A Slayer's Guide to Conquering the Kitchen or Die Trying)," this probably won't make a lot of sense as it takes place right after that one. Just an FYI. Also, naming conventions of these fics! Their names come from cookbooks, because I delight in little things like that. "How to Eat" is by Nigella Lawson. "Midnight Chicken and Other Recipes Worth Living For" is by Ella Risbridger, and her blog and cookbook have honestly done more to keep me fed and sane than anyone else with the exception of my best friends so, you know, check her out.
> 
> Also, this fic is dedicated to Sweetprincipale on EF, who is lovely and deserves all the lovely things.

“Am I going to have to be mad at you when I learn how you got back?”

Buffy held Spike to her fiercely—arms wrapped around his neck, legs wrapped around his waist, and head burrowed into his right shoulder while she tried to gasp in enough air to last her through their next round of fierce kissing.

Spike’s hands moved gently across her body. She didn’t think they had stopped moving once he had parked her on the kitchen table, a determined sweep memorizing every bit of her body and assuring them both that the other was real, was there, was _theirs_. “Prolly, yeah.”

“Then I don’t want to hear about it until after we’ve made love.” Her lips came to his neck and started working a path up toward his jaw. “We can test the table,”—kiss—“or the floor,”—gentle bite—“or my bedroom is up the stairs”—harder bite—“through that hallway.” She pulled back suddenly, a horrible thought crashing into her. “You do want me, right? I haven’t just been mauling you for the last—”

Spike interrupted her, kissing her with that fierce, brain-melting focus she loved (he could kiss like a drunk golden retriever and she would love it, love _him_ , but the fact that he kissed with enough passion to birth a star felt like an additional, unexpected, undeserved gift just for her), and Buffy forgot everything that wasn’t the man in her arms.

* * *

(They didn’t make it to the bed, but they also didn’t test the table because, Buffy gasped out as Spike sucked on her nipple while pulling her pants off, if they broke the table she didn’t want to have to explain it to Xander. They settled for the kitchen countertop and then the floor before they finally made it to Buffy’s bedroom. Spike eyed the table while they panted together in the afterglow of their round on the floor and silently determined that he’d have Buffy on it before the week was out. If she would be comfortable with it. If she didn’t stake him for taking so long to get to her.)

* * *

Three brilliant, glorious, perfect shags after they finally made it to her bed, Buffy curled up on Spike’s chest. “So are we gonna argue about how you didn’t believe me when I said I loved you or about how you came back?”

Spike pressed his lips into her hair. “I believed you, kitten. I just . . . had to get you outta there. Couldn’t let you die. Not when I could save you.”

Buffy’s sharp chin dug into his breastbone as she made eye contact with him. “So if I were to say ‘I love you’ right now . . .”

“I’d say it right back, and we’d find ourselves too busy making love to have that other argument you seem so keen on having.”

“So we’re gonna argue about how you came back then?”

“Be a waste of time to argue about how I came back.” He winced, and his eyes skittered away from hers. “How long I’ve been back is another story, though.”

“Spike,” for all that her body was a cuddly, limp noodle on top of his, there was a dangerous edge in her voice and her pointy chin seemed to burrow deeper into his chest. “How long have you been back?”

He sighed and faced those brilliant eyes that could burn a less flammable man than him alive. Better to get it over with at once, and if she staked him, at least he’d go lying in her bed. Much better than any place he’d ever died before. “Love, that bloody Liz Taylor amulet spat me out as a ghost in Peaches’s office nineteen days after it did that trick with the sun and melted my insides to ash.”

Buffy’s eyes were equal parts anger and heartbreak and a devastating understanding. “You are going to tell me everything. And you’re going to be as brief as possible. And then you’re going to shut up and let me think about how much groveling you have to do before I’ll forgive you. And then when I’ve told you how much groveling you need to do, you are going to kiss me until I forget everything you’ve just told me.”

Spike stared in astonishment at the woman above him for a moment. _Why the bleedin’ hell did I wait so long to get back to this goddess?_

* * *

Buffy woke in the middle of the night, sore and blissful and incredibly confused for half a moment about both of those. Then she realized a body was spooned around her, an arm slung across her waist and a leg wrapped around hers, and for a minute she was terrified that she had gone against everything she and her therapist had agreed would be the best way for her to even consider dating again—namely, going on a low-stakes coffee date with someone suggested by a friend and moving slowly on from there if the date was enjoyable and kindly stating that there would be no future dates if the date was not enjoyable but he pressed for more—and instead gotten drunk and picked up some guy at a pub and now she would have to move because clearly she couldn’t deal with the awkwardness of a morning after in her own home or the pain of knowing that she had let some random guy have a morning after when she had never allowed Spike to have one and Dawn would hate her for making them move but—

And then the man nuzzled his nose into her hair and sighed with contentment, and she remembered. _Spike_. Spike was alive. Undead. Whatever. He was _here_ and he loved her.

Buffy fell back asleep with a grin on her face and slept the best she had in years.

* * *

When they awoke (very late) the next morning, they made love slowly, tenderly. Hands caressing, lips adoring, relearning and reshaping the boundaries of each other. _(Here is where you end and I begin. Here is where I end and you are. If I move_ here _though, is it you touching me, or am I touching you? If you’re in me and I’m in you, do you ever really end? Do I? If I belong to you, is all of me just you? Are you all of me? If I touch you_ there _, does any of this matter? If I caress this spot, trace that scar, breathe your name just right, can this moment last forever? When I move like_ that _, will this moment end so a better one can begin? If I lose myself in you, will you throw away the key so I can stay lost in you?)_

Buffy had been in heaven before. This wasn’t heaven.

It was better.

* * *

Post–you’re alive sex marathon meant breakfast was needed. Which meant tossing bacon onto a sheet pan and into the oven. Meant sitting Spike down in front of the garbage can with a potato peeler, a mess of spuds, and a box grater to the side to shred them once they had been peeled. Meant going to her local butcher and instead of bringing a cookbook specifying she needed 1.5 pounds of pork belly and _Do I really have to shave the belly myself or do you do that?_ asking whether they sold blood. It meant walking in the sunshine and smiling brilliantly at the trees, reveling in the way London shone in reflection of her mood as she swung her bag carrying Spike’s breakfast.

When she made it home, he was still in her kitchen, still real and beautiful and snarky and asking whether she was sure she knew what she was doing. Buffy wanted to kiss his stupid mouth to make him shut up, but the overworked pile of dough in a bowl on her kitchen counter and the lashings of flour across her kitchen showed the result of the last time she had ignored her cooking to kiss his stupid mouth. Instead, she smacked his ass (just as dangerous, she quickly found, but the bacon was starting to smell good and, gloriously sated and happy, she refused to be distracted), clonked her skillet down on her stovetop, and set to making hash browns.

* * *

Dawn never returned from anything early. A correlation, Joyce and Buffy had once decided, to the fact that she never left for anything early. But she never came home early. Especially not weekend trips with friends to France. The goal had been to visit every room in the Louvre and to hit on at least three cute French boys and/or girls each, but that was before Sasha had caught some kind of weird stomach bug and then shared it with Gabriella. (Apparently, Sasha had decided to hit on someone French yet living in England, rather than French and living in France. Which Dawn was fine with, so long as she didn’t do it in the room they were all sharing for the weekend. There were _limits_ to her love of romance.) So rather than returning home Sunday night as had been the plan, Dawn returned home Saturday afternoon, tired, cranky, and determined to make Buffy make her a whole bunch of soup so she wouldn’t get the stomach thing either. Buffy never got sick, which was probably the worst thing about her as it meant she never could sympathize and only could hover, but it also meant that Buffy could spend all her time making soup or going on apple juice runs.

She was plotting out what soups she would ask for (tomato and chicken noodle, obviously, but also minestrone and maybe that Italian wedding one Buffy had made in the spring) when she made it to their front door. Which wasn’t locked. Which was fine! It was the middle of the day and Buffy could take care of herself. But when she pushed the door open, Buffy didn’t immediately call out in greeting. And when she dropped her things in a heap in the front room, Buffy didn’t start yelling at her for leaving here things in front of the entry way. And when Dawn walked into the kitchen, it was a mess, a pile of dough in a corner that had clearly taken on a life of it’s own and flour everywhere and a chair knocked over and Buffy’s apron on the floor and—

And then she heard thumps coming from upstairs and Buffy crying _pleeeeease_ in a broken, begging voice, and Dawn grabbed the cast iron skillet off the stovetop and rushed to her sister’s rescue.

Being possessed by the righteous, terrified fury of a Summers woman meant that Dawn didn’t really let it process that the naked man holding her sister up to the wall looked a lot like Spike, nor that Buffy was holding him close rather than kicking his ass. Instead, she hit him over the head with the skillet, knocked him unconscious, spent a few seconds processing all the skin she was seeing, and then ran screaming into the hallway, dropping her skillet on her way out onto Spike’s prone cranium and demanding Buffy tell her _what the fuck was going on and just who the hell she was screwing in their house because I live here too you know_.

* * *

After Buffy threw some clothes on and explained to Dawn what had happened while they waited for Spike to regain consciousness and then Dawn waited for Spike to dress so she could fling herself at him and tell him that she never ever, ever, _ever_ wanted to light him on fire _or_ see him naked again, things settled down in the new Summers–Pratt household.

(Spike had offered to find his own place. It was a half-hearted offer at best, but it made Buffy coldly hurt and Dawn loudly furious, and before he could shove his foot even further in his mouth, Buffy had stormed out of the room. When he found her in the bedroom, it was to his clothes tucked in Buffy’s dresser and closet with Buffy herself glaring at him like displeased royalty from the bed. Dawn had then dragged him to the kitchen, sat him down at the table, and lectured him on the fact that he was part of the family and he better get used to it while Buffy called Giles up, informed him of Spike’s return, told him she refused to discuss it further, and announced that he was to share Spike’s description with the girls so that if anything happened to the love of her life, she could destroy whoever who touched him with a clear conscience. Buffy had threatened people on his behalf before, and every time it made both his violence-loving demon and his oft-rejected human nature sit up and take notice. When Buffy had hung up the phone Dawn had run out of steam on her lecture, Spike grabbed Buffy and dragged her upstairs, up to their room so he could worship her properly with his tongue and hands and cock and adoring words.)

During the week, Dawn attended her fancy school that the Council paid for. Four days a week, Buffy walked to the train station and took the hour-long train trip to the Watcher’s Council headquarters. There she trained the baby slayers and read reports from the watchers around the world on how the other slayers were and what the situations in their slice of the globe were like. Sometimes she met with the coven or some blacksmiths about developing new slayer weapons, especially ones similar to her scythe. At the end of the day, she would take the train back to London, letting the distance growing between her and headquarters soothe out the stress lines in her forehead and the tension in her shoulders. She would read cookbooks that she had stuffed in her bag, planning out the evening meal. Or she would read poetry and let the words wash over her psyche.

Now that Spike was with her, though, those train rides would include snuggling or chatting with him on days when the English gloom allowed him to come to work with her and spar with the girls. Or if he couldn’t come in, Buffy would think about what she would do to Spike when she got home.

They would kiss and make love and argue. For every time dinner ended up inedible because Buffy was too focused on kissing Spike to mind the bubbling pan on the stove, there was another time when one of them would storm out of the room because the argument was too ridiculous, too dumb, and potentially too damaging to continue until their red-hot tempers could calm. Because no matter how much they loved each other, nobody pushed their buttons like the other could. Buffy would do a hair flip combined with a sniff that made Spike want to rip her head off. Spike would affect a deadpan drawl that made Buffy see red. They would storm away, and then come back together as inevitable as the tide returning to the shore. Except not inevitable, Buffy found herself telling her therapist one time, because they made a _choice_ to return. In the bad year, their colliding had felt inevitable, and it had hurt them. But now it was a choice they made because they loved each other too much to stay away too long.

* * *

(It would have been impossible for Buffy to explain to her therapist that Spike had returned from the dead, so she didn’t. She had only ever told the woman that the man who loved and knew her better than anyone else was gone, and when he came back, she glossed over the details with a simple “I didn’t even realize he was alive.” Any conclusions her therapist might have come too based on Buffy’s poorly edited stories and the fact that Buffy had once stopped a vampire from making a dinner out of the woman after a late session that resulted in them walking out of the building together was her therapist’s business.)

* * *

(God, she really needed to get better at lying and telling cover stories. Denial must be genetic, because there's no way her mom wouldn’t have figured out what she was up to all those years prior to Acathla if she wasn’t deep in it.)

* * *

Breakfast the morning after Dawn’s return was a quietly happy affair. (It was in contrast to the breakfast Dawn hadn’t been there for, which had been a loudly happy and occasionally orgasmic affair.) Buffy mixed together pancake batter while Dawn started coffee. Spike pulled his blood out of the refrigerator before looking around the kitchen with the bewildered air of someone who doesn’t know where anything is.

Dawn was staring at the coffee pot as if it would shortly hold the answer to life’s questions, but Buffy sensed his confusion and reached to the cupboard holding the coffee mugs. Her fingers stuttered for a minute before she grabbed her Manchester U mug—microwave safe, slightly too large for her ideal coffee mug yet still the one she used every morning, holder of so many memories—and passed it to him. Spike caught the stutter; Dawn caught the weirdness of Buffy not having it in her hands when they sat around the kitchen table later to eat pancakes (Buffy’s pancakes were soaked in syrup; Spike’s were soaked in blood; Dawn’s were soaked in syrup and slathered with marmite and anchovy paste and orange marmalade).

In the days that followed, Spike always used the Man U mug for his blood, and Buffy’s morning coffee was in a plain white mug that her fingers twitched around. After three days of this, Dawn grabbed Spike by the wrist and dragged him out into the overcast morning.

“Bit,” Spike had no idea what had gotten into the girl this time, but so long as the sun stayed behind the clouds, he was willing to go along with it. “What the hell are you doing?”

“We’re going shopping.”

She refused to tell him more, just herded him through the streets until they reached the store Buffy had bought all their dishes at.

Spike found himself shoved through the doorway, facing a veritable sea of gleaming dishware. “Did you break Buffy’s dishes? Do we need to get replacements? Because I left my wallet at home and I don’t think I can lift a complete replacement set, even with your able but supposedly out of practice help.”

“We’re not buying or stealing dishes. You’re buying Buffy a coffee mug. And, jeez, who do you think I am? I have your wallet.”

Spike turned to look at Dawn. “Why am I buying your sis a new coffee mug? Aren’t there enough at the house? And when do you nick my wallet?”

“You are buying Buffy a new coffee mug because the one you’re using is the one she bought and used every day because of you. You are getting her a different, slightly smaller one because you two are disgustingly in love and you want her to be happy and to have a mug that matches yours. And I did not nick your wallet; I grabbed it before we left because I am _prepared_.”

Dawn marched him to the aisle with the novelty mugs and pointedly ignored his muttered, “Sounds like you nicked it to me.”

Dawn gestured to the aisle spread out before them. “Here we are. Land of the novelty mugs. Find her something nice.” Then she walked away.

It took him thirty-five minutes to dig through all the options and find Buffy the perfect mug, one slightly smaller than his but still with a thick handle, one she could wrap her hands around on cold mornings to keep them warm. One that still had a Man U logo blazoned across it.

Spike felt as if he was moving through thick soup as he held the mug and went to find Dawn so he could get his wallet and legally purchase an overpriced novelty mug. A century of mayhem and bloodshed rubbed against the moment he was currently living in; everything felt a bit surreal, a bit like it was happening to someone else. Even as he walked home with the Niblet and listened to her chatter, part of his brain was slowly ticking his way through William the Bloody laying down his fangs to pick out a sodding novelty mug for his girl on a Thursday morning while the girl’s sister walked beside him.

It wasn’t a bad change; it was just a weird change, and the whiplash of the moment left his brain and body moving two steps slower than normal.

And then he was handing the mug to his girl, watching Buffy’s face light up at something so stupid and inconsequential, and the moment clicked back into place for him. He was William the Bloody, Slayer of Slayers, and he was the happiest he had ever been in his entire life.

* * *

Two weeks after Spike came home to Buffy, the slayers in LA found themselves each the recipient of a gorgeous, expensive chocolate gift basket roughly the size of their torsos, each with the same note: “Thanks for kicking his ass into gear, Buffy.” That Friday, the girls stayed home, ate chocolate, watched movies, painted their nails, and remembered that for all they were slayers, they were also girls. Because yeah, it was their job to save the world. But the one thing Buffy had taught them that no Watcher had ever thought to teach a slayer was that you have to love the world, you have to hold on to bits of joy where you can find them and _live_ in the world, otherwise you’ll come to resent the world you have to save and that resentment will lead you directly to your grave.

* * *

(Two weeks after Spike came home to Buffy, Angel received a packet of legal papers from the Council’s lawyers. They explicitly stated that unless it was an apocalypse or a crisis of apocalyptic proportions and he could not get in contact with any other Council representative, Angel was not allowed to contact Buffy Summers in any matter, including in person, via technology (phone, email, online chat, telegram, cable, wire, or any future technologies that might come into existence), via magical means (teleportation, mystical signals, runes, portals, portents, mystical beings, or any other magical mean that might come into existence), or via family, friends, or other associates of Ms. Summers. If he tried to contact Ms. Summers outside of the prescribed apocalyptic circumstances, the Council of Watchers would prosecute him immediately in the matter of Ms. Summers’ choosing. A fatal end would not be precluded from the possibilities of prosecution.

Theoretically, it was impossible for a vampire to turn paler than the hue given to them at their death and subsequent reanimation. Lack of blood and inability to tan and all that. Angel’s face, however, still managed to become a shade even Maybelline couldn’t match.)

* * *

It had been more than a year since Spike had last seen Buffy, so of course she had changed. But she also hadn’t changed at all. She was still terrible at expressing her thoughts in words, prone to snap judgments, liable to storm off and leave him trailing behind trying to figure out what the hell was going on in her cute little head, able to love beyond anyone’s deserving, trusting even where trust clearly wasn’t deserved, silly and ridiculous when she let herself be, and bloody smart. During that terrible year and the less terrible but still not great year after it, he had known her better than anyone else, better even than she herself did. Which also meant he didn’t know her, because who can know anyone when that person is a mystery to themselves, who has secrets and motives hidden so well that they themselves don’t know them but that, as the mysteries still exist, can change everything?

He knew her, but he also didn’t know her. And during the past year, she had clearly come to know herself and, in the doing so, had changed.

Which just meant that Spike had a chance to learn her all over again.

“Pet, why are you here?”

“Because I live here?” Buffy craned up her neck from where it rested on his chest to look at him like she thought he was insane. When Dru used to toss him those looks, it drove him nuts. When Buffy did it though, he had to hold back his smile. Amazing how being loved back would make Love’s Bitch more patient.

“I mean in Merry Ol’, love. I’d have thought you’d be someplace warm where you could wear your frilly bits of nothin’. Greece or Egypt or maybe Mexico.” Spike ran his fingers through her hair, scratching gently at her scalp to encourage Buffy to lie back down on him.

She did, snuggling her face into his chest in such a way that made a part of him (okay, all of him) purr in contentment. The purring immediately halted when he heard how quiet and small her voice was. “Because you felt closest here. I would hear someone speak with your accent or take a ride on the Eye and see an old city that was modern and full of life and I would feel close to you.” She snuggled closer, breathed deeply, and Spike could feel her heartbeat calm a touch. “I visited Greece. Killed some brown slime cake monster there. It was too quiet and peaceful and I felt trapped. Giles kept suggesting I move to Rome—apparently there’s some immortal dude he thought I should keep an eye on? And I just . . . I couldn’t bear to be apart from a place that felt like you. Maybe one day I could have gone somewhere else. But not now.”

Spike smothered his instinctual growl at Buffy’s mention of the Immortal and focused instead on what else she was saying. His girl had chosen to stay in dreary London, had chosen to let her perpetual California tan fade, because it made her feel close to him. And he was speechless. Words couldn’t explain the awe he felt at knowing that she had committed to an entire bleeding _city_ despite the encouragement of her Watcher just so she could feel close to him.

Love like that was enough to make a man religious. Love like that was enough to make a man pull a ring off his finger and propose.

Unfortunately, his favorite ring for proposing to Buffy with hadn’t been on his finger in years. He had never received it back from her after their engagement dissolved in mutual horror, and he had never been brave enough to ask what Buffy had done with it. Spike instead had to content himself with pressing his lips over and over into her hair until she raised her head enough for him to kiss her forehead, her nose, her lips.

* * *

The first time Willow came to London to visit after Spike’s return, Spike spent two days prior to the visit pacing a hole in the floor and demanding he and Buffy go out on patrol so he could kill something. Dawn and Buffy tried to tell him it would be fine, but when he responded with a glare and harder pacing, they muttered loudly about brooding vampires and let him be. And then Willow walked into their cozy little home, saw Spike, and threw herself at him in joy. Her arms had a stranglehold on his neck as she spoke fiercely to him: “Thank you for coming back. Buffy wanted you so much. She was going to be okay, but she wanted you, and you came back. Thank you, thank you, _thank you_ for coming back to her.”

Buffy and Dawn smiled at them smugly from the doorway to the kitchen as Spike gave them a wide-eyed look of astonishment. Their little family was going to be okay.

* * *

She would wake up sometimes from nightmares. Dreams of burning, of graves, of rivers of blood and hell dimensions. The downside of being the longest lived slayer, of being _the Slayer_ in a world of slayers, was that she had experienced the most horrors of any slayer.

When she woke with nightmares, Buffy would wrap Spike around herself (even when her dreams had been of being smothered, of being buried alive, clinging to Spike never made her feel claustrophobic or crowded, just free) and ask him questions. It was a way of soothing herself in both the comforting cadence of his voice and the knowledge of his presence, but it also gave Buffy a chance to learn more about the love of her life and his years without her. “What was New York like in the ’70s?” “What was it like when the Berlin Wall fell?” “Why Manchester U? Why not some other football club?” “Tell me about Japan. Are you really not allowed in an onsen if you have a tattoo because of gangsters?” “If you had to live in one place for the rest of your life, where would it be?”

“Right by your side, Slayer.”

* * *

They weren’t old (well, Spike technically was old, and some days Buffy felt old with all that she’d seen and done), but now that they didn’t have to shag frantically in stolen moments to keep anyone else from finding out about them, now that the shagging was expected of them and Dawn would just roll her eyes and turn her music up or go to the library, Buffy and Spike calmed down a bit. (Buffy had taken to calling their love-making _shagging_ in her head. “Fucking” sounded too crude, too like their bad year. “Sexing” was apparently not a word. “Making love” was a bit too sweet for daily use. “Shagging,” though, was Spike and sex all in one word and absolutely perfect for them.) They had fun in bed. They still had a lot of fantastic sex, but they also would just cuddle. Spike would read to Buffy all the classics she never had time to read in high school, all the poetry she wanted to read in college, all the cheesy horror books that made them laugh. (Never Bram Stoker’s _Dracula_ , even though Buffy had declared it cheesy; it always put Spike in a mood even when he was mocking the vamp’s affectations.)

Tonight’s fun saw Buffy carrying Spike’s warmed blood and three oven mitts up to the bedroom and strategically splaying the mitts across the comforter near the foot of their bed.

“What’s this, pet?” Spike raised his eyebrows at her from the window where he was smoking and reading a novel.

“Something you can’t touch. I’ll be right back.”

Buffy returned to the kitchen. She grabbed the pan off the stove, two forks, and the hot chili flakes Spike loved to spice foods up. “It’s dinner. Carbonara. I want my legs under the blanket and I want you to snuggle with me and I want us to eat.”

Sometimes Spike looked at her like she was a miracle. Sometimes he looked at her like she was completely off her gourd and the only one who hadn’t noticed yet was her. Sometimes he looked at her as his leader, sometimes he looked at her as his lover. He looked at her with love and lust and frustration and devotion and with every emotion in between. And sometimes, he looked at her like she was a siren who had hung the stars just to bring him joy. This was one of those moments.

“Brilliant, love.” He stubbed out his cigarette while Buffy slipped her legs under the covers. She swirled her fork in the creamy noodles and took a bite, letting the warmth of her food and the comfort of her love seep into her. It had been a week. A week of researching an apocalypse set to go down on the Falkland Islands. It was supposed to be a minor one, and the other girls had to learn how to deal with an apocalypse on their own, and so Buffy stayed behind providing advice to the slayers and watchers from South America sent to deal with it. The Southern Hemisphere had survived, but Buffy still felt vaguely guilty and itchy that she hadn’t been there. So creamy, cheesy, and bacony Italian comfort was the solution.

Spike threw his right arm around Buffy’s shoulders and reached for his fork and the pasta with his free hand. “You’re not putting any pepper flakes in?”

“Thanks, but I like my nose not dripping into my food. If you want to add it to your bites and your bites only, though, be my guest.”

“Come on, Slayer. You can’t be telling me you don’t love a little spice in your life.”

The subtle emphasis Spike laid on “spice” was completely obliterated by the eyebrow waggle and noodle slurping that accompanied it. “Mmm, maybe, but not tonight. Tonight I’m spice-free Buffy.”

At that Spike smiled, another warm smile that crinkled his eyes in delightful ways. “If my girl wants spice-free creaminess, that’s what my girl will have.”

“Good, because your girl also wants you to read to her while we snuggle and eat.”

“A slave driver, that’s what my girl is.”

“Buffy the Vampire Slave Driver, that’s me.”

* * *

Xander, in typical Xander fashion, showed up at Buffy’s doorstep on a Thursday night without any prior warning. Spike answered the door when he knocked, and the two men just looked at each other for a few minutes. They had never liked each other, and he had kidnapped Xander once, and Xander had found Buffy in the bathroom after Spike had almost—, and then there was the fact that Spike came back from the dust when Xander’s bird was still buried in the Sunnydale crater, and—

Xander stuck out his hand, cutting off Spike’s spiraling train of thought. “Look, I know they don’t need you anymore than they need me, but if you take care of Buffy and Dawn for me, Willow too when she’s around and needs backup, I can give you a second a chance if you can give me one.”

“Yeah, mate,” came Spike’s reply in a surprisingly thick voice as they shook. “I think I can do that.”

“Good, ’cause the Buffster’s saying we all have to do Christmas here, and the girls will murder us if we ruin their Christmas, even though it’s not even Willow’s holiday.”

“Eh, we could always go down to the pub if they get too fractious. Let them blow off some steam and enjoy a few holiday pints with the rest of the blokes avoiding their women.”

Xander stepped in the front door and walked with Spike toward the kitchen with the easy assurance of one who had been there many times, who knew which drawer the silverware was in and where they kept the spare toilet paper in the bathroom. “See, that’s the kind of thinking that’s been missing from the Scoobies all these years. Too much estrogen in the group.”

Spike, who was wrapping his arms around Buffy and ignoring her muttered “I told you it would be fine when he came back,” wisely didn’t respond.

* * *

Every time Buffy went out on a mission, Spike went with her. It didn’t matter the location, the mission, or the duration, he was always on her left. Which meant that the slayers’ chat room always had a lot of gossip when it came to the two of them. But it also meant that an apocalypse going down outside Tehran in the middle of the day left Spike standing in the shade of a building, yelling advice to the slayers and curses at Buffy for being too reckless and destroying any nasty that came too close to his sun-bound prison. It also meant that, when the seven-headed demon creature whose belly spat decay was put down, the slayers got to watch Buffy smile brilliantly at Spike, run across the distance separating them, leap into his arms, and kiss him with all the fire and passion of a girl who was once told she was full of love. It was, the slayers stationed in Iran assured the other girls via chat that evening, even better than the kiss at the bottom of the ravine in _The Princess Bride_.

* * *

Another thing that made the Buffy of London different from the Buffy of Sunnydale: when she was furious, boiling angry and about to blow at the seams, Buffy of London didn’t go out to patrol and stake vamps the way Buffy of Sunnydale did. Instead, she had two options because, she told Spike after she stormed into the kitchen one day, London wasn’t on a hellmouth and so had fewer vamps spread out over a larger area than Sunnydale and also baby slayers would train in London sometimes and take more of Buffy’s few slays, meaning that she couldn’t guarantee going on a patrol would give her enough violence to work off her fury. Instead, she would go home to make pastry—beating together thin layers of butter and dough with a rolling pin or her bare hands—or enough bread to keep a French bakery in business for two weeks. When pummeling dough wouldn’t be enough to take the itch out of her fists, she went to a local boxing club. She would attack a speed bag or a punching bag until she was covered in a fine sheen of sweat and the bag looked wilted. When she had worked off enough frustration that she could spar without decimating anyone, she and Spike would go a few rounds in the ring, executing moves that weren’t strictly allowed but which no one dared to object to.

The times they were at the club for reasons other than working off frustration were Spike’s favorite though.

The first time a call came in, Spike was the one to answer the phone and stand there bemusedly while a man who introduced himself as Big Joe asked whether Miss Summers could come meet some of his new boys. Spike had passed on the request to Buffy with a lot of confusion and a bit of jealous insecurity, and she had laughed and told him to tell Big Joe that she could come by in an hour and that she would be bringing a friend.

Turns out, Buffy was able to visit the club for free whenever she wanted to so long as she humiliated the cocky rookies who saw Big Joe in his 6’3”, 247 pound glory as a challenge to undermine rather than a business man to listen to when they were in his business. Because while they would be rude to other men who pounded them into the mats and insufferably smug while misusing the equipment, there was something about being destroyed by a blonde bit of nothing that got them to take the rink seriously or take their business elsewhere.

The first time Spike watched her teach a lesson to some bro with an attitude and a pungent cologne while holding back almost all her power and still not breaking a sweat, he had gotten a hard-on that had taken screwing her twice in the locker room and five times at home to diminish.

The second time, he provided commentary to the regulars of Big Joe’s club that caused them to double over laughing. Then he had gotten to spar with Buffy; fighting with her felt like the revelation it had always been but with a side of post-fighting snuggles and orgasms once they had made it back to the house.

His girl and her world had changed while he was gone. But as he greeted the gym rats at Big Joe’s place while Buffy moved purposefully toward a punching bag, Spike could also admit that his greatest honor after having her love was to keep meeting each new version of his girl, his bright effulgent queen who could mop the floor with him if she so chose.

* * *

They were snuggled together on their bed. Spike sat with his back against their headboard and Buffy cradled in his arms while she reviewed a report from some watcher and he worked to make sure her right shoulder was appropriately laved with love and attention. While she read, Spike started at her shoulder and kissed, sucked, nipped, and licked his way up her shoulder and neck to her ear and then back down again. If it distracted her from her reports, he wouldn’t complain, but it was also serious work making sure every piece of his golden goddess was adored; the longer Buffy remained focused, the longer he could make sure this corner of her knew he loved it.

It was on his third time nipping his way around her ear that a memory chimed in Spike’s brain. “Didn’t you used to have more jewelry here?” He nipped the shell of her ear to emphasize the _here_ he meant.

The moment it took Buffy to formulate her response was gratifying, a reminder she was just as affected by him as he was by her. “I did, but one earring fell out during patrol. By the time I got a replacement, Slayer healing had closed the hole. I eventually took the others out; they seemed too frivolous, and I needed to save the world.”

Spike hummed in response and tugged the skin of her ear where he could barely make out the indentations left over from the piercings. He wouldn’t complain about the events and moments that made the glorious woman he held in his arms, but he wished her life had had a little more time for frivolity. Not just dancing to blow off steam during a rough week, but piercings and silliness and bachelorette parties with too much tequila and parties not interrupted by demons.

“I still have the earrings.”

Spike hummed against the skin of her neck, and she took that as encouragement to continue. “One of the few things I saved from Sunnydale was my jewelry box. My earrings were in it and Mom’s wedding set and these emerald earrings Dawn’s supposed to get when she turns eighteen and this ugly pearl broach that belonged to my grandma that I would steal to hold a blanket around my neck like a cape and pretend to be Power Girl.”

Buffy fell quiet at that, leaning heavily into Spike and letting him continue his journey to her shoulder. “If you wanted, love, bet we can find a tattoo parlor. Do your ears up again real pretty.”

“Are you saying my ears are ugly now?”

“Saying my girl deserves to have as many shiny bits of jewelry on her as she wants, even if they’re ugly broaches she uses to pretend to be a superhero.”

“Are you saying I’m not a superhero?”

“I’m saying I bet you looked right adorable in the cape, but I’d much rather see you in nothing at all.”

Buffy turned around and pushed her face into Spike’s neck so she could begin doing some adoring of her own, a smile playing on her lips. “You’re incorrigible.”

“And you love me.”

“Yeah, yeah I do.”

* * *

It was a few days later when Spike looked through Buffy’s jewelry box for the earrings. They were easy to find, sitting in the top tray of the box, and everything else Buffy had mentioned was in there as well, including one thing she hadn’t said anything about. Hidden under the top tray of the box and under a deeply ugly broach that could only have belonged to Buffy’s grandmother was a ring. His ring. Or, he guessed, her ring. Their ring. It didn’t matter. The thick, heavy band and gleaming skull were just as Spike remembered them from that day years ago when he had pulled it off his finger and used it to propose to the most amazing girl in the world. He had assumed she had thrown it away or crushed it under a sledgehammer or melted it with the force of her righteous fury, and instead Buffy had tucked it away with her precious memories and gems and saved it from the end of the world.

Spike tenderly put the ring back in its spot at the bottom of the box and covered it with her other jewelry before snagging the delicate hoops. His girl was going to be decked in as many shiny baubles and bits of jewelry as she wanted, even if it meant letting her crush every sodding bone in his hand to dust while she got her ears pierced again.

* * *

(She kept it in her _jewelry box_. With things from her _mum_ , her _grandmum_ even. She saved Mr. Gordo, birth certificates, and bits of family heirlooms, and his ring was important enough to rank with the important bits worth saving when the world was falling into hell.

Fuck, but this girl could break a man down to nothing and then rebuild him into a giant.)

* * *

Buffy always seemed to make marinara sauce when she wore white. Which would be fine, except in their little household arrangement, Spike somehow had become the one in charge of doing the laundry. Which, again, fine, caring for his women had never been a problem, except when one woman who had discovered the glories of cooking wore colors that soaked in tomato stains like the scant drops of water in the desert.

Another difference between Sunnydale-Buffy and London-Buffy.

When in the throes of trying to scrub out a particularly stubborn stain, Spike snarkily asked whether she had ever even considered wearing black for something other than slaying. After all, his rant continued as the stain continued to win their battle, a color that hides blood stains from a variety of demon races would probably be mighty handy in hiding the stains from the lifeblood of some measly tomatoes.

Which was how Buffy started wearing Spike’s black t-shirts half-tucked into her leggings and covered with her apron while she went on her marinara sauce/jam/chili making marathons.

It was, Spike acknowledged with despair after Dawn had caught him staring at her sister in that outfit one too many times and had given up laughing at him to instead be annoyed at how the staring always happened in the middle of blocking a doorway, the best and worst thing that had happened to him in recent memory.

* * *

The first time a Manchester United game was broadcast after Spike stormed back into her life, Buffy pictured spending the afternoon cozily cuddled up to Spike in an armchair, him holding her and explaining what was happening, her basking in the snuggles and maybe fetching him more blood or beer.

This picture lasted for about ten minutes in real life, at which point someone did something Spike didn’t agree with—Buffy couldn’t tell whether it was someone from their team or the team with blue on their jerseys or if it was a call a ref made that pissed him off—and he stood up, unceremoniously dropping her to the floor in a move that made her yelp, to shout at the television and pace.

Which was how he spent the rest of the game, and every other game that he watched at the house.

So rather than snuggling with her love, Buffy spent game days baking cookies that would inevitably lure Dawn out of her study sessions. Dawn would steal cookies off the baking rack and sit on a counter near Buffy and the Summers girls would catch up and giggle at the cursing roaring in from the living room. And when the game was over, Spike would either triumphantly burst into the kitchen to kiss Buffy and steal cookies or slink in to kiss her and get sympathy for the loss and steal cookies.

Buffy decided this was much better than her original plan. She really didn’t want to watch the games all that much anyway.

* * *

(“We’re rooting for the United States for the Women’s World Cup.”

“What’s that, Slayer?”

“We’re rooting for the United States. I’ll root for Man U during the regular season and Great Britain when it’s the men’s World Cup, but when it’s the Women’s World Cup, we’re rooting for the United States.”

“Why are we rooting for the States?”

“Because they’ve won the Cup twice now, and I bet Mia Hamm could kick even my ass.”

“Fair enough, pet.”)

* * *

The poetry starts spilling into their life together in quiet ways. Poetry books on their shelves, whispers of Frost and Neruda and Donne in her ears while they make love. Buffy gets the story out of him one night, of William the Bloody Awful Poet, and the only thing she says is that him being a poet would explain why Spike always had the words she needed to hear, but that anyone who could put her into words as precisely as he could couldn’t be a bad poet, let alone a bloody awful one.

Sometime after that the other poems start spilling into their life together. Buffy doesn’t say anything, but Spike tells her anyway that it’s her fault for being so happy, for glowing, effulgent, a glorious golden goddess on earth walking where mortals dare not tread. It’s her fault her recipes and shopping lists begin to get bits of poetry in the margins, poetry about her and fighting and the Bit and home and football and her, her, her.

Buffy saves each one, makes him read them aloud to her by kissing her way up Spike’s neck and tugging gently at his earlobe with her teeth until he’s breathing heavy and clutching at her with desperate hands. Spike tells her that he can tell she’s a goddess because only a goddess would demand such tribute from her poor worshipper. Buffy responds by telling him she has to be demanding; he’s the only worshipper whose tribute she’s willing to accept.

Dawn announces loudly and semi-regularly that she loves them but they need to not be mushy and gross in rooms she might walk into.

* * *

Spike proposes again with a poem he wrote and his skull ring from Buffy’s jewelry box. (Not that he needs to propose; they’re all but married now with how committed they are to each other, and Spike’s not convinced that even dying would separate them as it hasn’t been successful yet. But he wants to propose, wants to marry her. He wants a ring on her finger to remind her that he’s with her when he can’t be around and she’s having a dark day; he wants a commitment forged in legal documents for when it comes to putting names on property and bank accounts and to telling too eager blokes at the pub to bugger off. He wants to be able to introduce people to his wife, wants her to call him her husband when chatting to new slayers.) They’re in the kitchen, and he had been waiting for the perfect moment before realizing that the kitchen is the heart of their little home, where he and Buffy spend the most time outside their bedroom, and so he simply drops to his knees, poem prepared and stuffed in his back pocket and ring waiting in his front one. Buffy cries and says yes and flings herself at him, and Spike doesn’t even get a chance to say that he wants to buy her a real ring before Buffy’s jammed the skull back on her finger where it belongs and begun kissing him senseless.


End file.
